rivolity of the upper classes, as depicted by contemporary and not
unfriendly observers. The nobles were as idle and as ignorant as their
inferiors. They were not given to tournays nor to the delights of the
chase and table, but were fond of brilliant festivities, dancing,
gambling, masquerading, love-making, and pompous exhibitions of equipage,
furniture, and dress. These diversions--together with the baiting of
bulls and the burning of Protestants--made up their simple round of
pleasures. When they went to the wars they scorned all positions but that
of general, whether by land or sea, and as war is a trade which requires
an apprenticeship; it is unnecessary to observe that these grandees were
rarely able to command, having never learned to obey. The poorer
Spaniards were most honourably employed perhaps--so far as their own
mental development was concerned--when they were sent with pike and
arquebus to fight heretics in France and Flanders. They became brave and
indomitable soldiers when exported to the seat of war, and thus afforded
proof--by strenuously doing the hardest physical work that human beings
can be called upon to perform, campaigning year after year amid the
ineffable deprivations, dangers, and sufferings which are the soldier's
lot--that it was from no want of industry or capacity that the lower
masses of Spaniards in that age were the idle, listless, dice-playing,
begging, filching vagabonds into which cruel history and horrible
institutions had converted them at home.

It is only necessary to recal these well-known facts to understand why
one great element of production--human labour--was but meagrely supplied.
It had been the deliberate policy of the Government for ages to extirpate
the industrious classes, and now that a great portion of Moors and Jews
were exiles and outcasts, it was impossible to supply their place by
native workmen. Even the mechanics, who condescended to work with their
hands in the towns, looked down alike upon those who toiled in the field
and upon those who, attempted to grow rich by traffic. A locksmith or a
wheelwright who could prove four descents of western, blood called
himself a son of somebody--a hidalgo--and despised the farmer and the
merchant. And those very artisans were careful not to injure themselves
by excessive industry, although not reluctant by exorbitant prices to
acquire in one or-two days what might seem a fair remuneration for a
week, and to impress upon